Satellite dish solar cooker bakes potatoes and more

Hone your survival skills by harnessing the sun’s rays to cook your meals. [Robert] and his daughter turned an old satellite dish into a solar cooker. The image above shows them baking some potatoes, but the temperatures inside the cast iron vessel are high enough to let you cook most foods.

The dish was originally used for satellite television but has been collecting dust in the shed for quite some time. When [Robert] came across a roll of foil tape in his workshop he decided to give the project a whirl. His daughter helped out by peeling away the tape backing (this can be much harder than it sounds) while he applied the reflective material trying to keep it free of wrinkles. After a close call [Robert] donned a pair of welding goggles when positioning the dish. If the light intensity can get the pot up as high as 428 degree Fahrenheit we’re sure it can cause flash blindness.

Unlike other dish cookers we’ve seen, [Robert] didn’t use the original mount for holding the dish in place. He just set it on three bricks and directed it by hand. To keep the intensity focused on the kettle he had to reposition it every 15 minutes.

An entire Arduino for this would be a huge waste of silicon. A single 8 pin mcu, some pwm code, four photoresistors and a 2 axis motor driver will do. The analog version would use 2 opamps instead of the mcu but would be a lot less efficient by driving motors the linear way.

Sorry for reporting the above post, obviously a mistake. That report link is definitely both the wrong place and color.

That video made me cringe too many times. Little kids playing around and looking at the hot spot, people sticking their hands right where they shouldn’t, and not a single piece of eye protection.
Other than that, it’s a pretty effective device. Now if only there were huge junk TVs like that laying around my neighborhood.

Cool video. I know what to do with the 50″ TV my friend is tossing my way. Too expensive to fix (his excuse to get a new one), so I can get the lens and DLP chip among other parts. Will try ants first :P